Jorund chuckled. ‘Saxon and Dane! It’s a forced marriage, father. Most of my lads are Saxons, but maybe a third are Danes, and I’m always having to stop the silly bastards from hammering each other senseless. But that’s young men, isn’t it?’

‘You lead men?’ I asked, surprised.

‘I do.’

‘A Dane leading Saxons?’ I explained my surprise.

‘The world changes, doesn’t it?’ Jorund sounded amused. ‘Coenwald could have taken my land, but he didn’t, and he knows I’m the most experienced of all his warriors.’ He turned to look at the room. ‘And most of those lads need experience. They’ve never seen a proper fight. God help them, they think it’s a tavern brawl with spears. Still, I hope to lead every last one of them home, and soon!’

Jorund was a good man, I thought, yet fate, that most capricious bitch, might demand that I face him in a shield wall one day. ‘I hope you lead them home very soon,’ I said, ‘and that you gather your harvest in safely.’

‘I pray the same,’ Jorund said. ‘And I pray never to see another shield wall as long as I live. But if it is to be a real war then it won’t take long.’

‘It won’t?’ I asked.

‘It’s us and the West Saxons against the Mercians. Two against one, see?’

‘Maybe the Northumbrians will fight alongside the Mercians,’ I suggested mischievously.

‘They’ll not come south,’ Jorund said scornfully.

‘Yet you say there’s a rumour that Uhtred of Bebbanburg is already here,’ I said.

‘If he was here,’ Jorund said flatly, ‘he’d have his army of northern savages with him. Besides, there’s plague up north.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘We hear tales,’ he went on, ‘and they say Jorvik is a city of corpses.’

‘Jorvik!’ I asked, unable to keep the alarm from my voice.

‘So they say,’ Jorund said.

I felt a cold shiver. My hand went to touch my hammer amulet and again found Gerbruht’s wooden cross. Father Oda saw the gesture. ‘I pray God that’s just another rumour,’ the priest said too hurriedly. ‘You leave the city soon?’ he asked Jorund, evidently trying to move the conversation beyond the fear of plague.

‘God knows, father,’ Jorund said, ‘and God isn’t telling me. We stay here, or maybe we don’t stay here. Maybe the Mercian lad will make trouble, and maybe he won’t. He won’t if he has any sense.’ He poured the last of the jug’s ale into our beakers. ‘But I didn’t come to bore you with talk of war, father,’ he said, ‘but wondered if you’d be kind enough to give us a blessing?’

‘With pleasure, my son,’ Father Oda said.

‘I hope you recover, mistress,’ Jorund said to Benedetta. She had not understood the conversation in Danish, but smiled her thanks to Jorund, who now called the room to silence.

Father Oda gave the blessing, enjoining his god to bring peace and to spare the lives of all the men in the tavern. Jorund thanked him and we left, walking the riverside street in silence for a while. ‘So they’re searching all the ships that leave,’ Oda said.